Bush allies, critics go all out in fight over Rove (from "Japan Today")

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=343755

Along the way, he has picked up nicknames: A recent bestselling book called him "Bush's Brain," but Bush himself has dubbed him "Boy Genius" and even "Turd Blossom," though Rove says it's not as unflattering as it sounds. "It's a Texas phrase. In the west Texas plains, wild flowers will spring up through nature's natural fertilizer, shall we say," Rove told ABC television in 2004. It's unclear what sort of flowers may spring up out of the trouble the veteran stategist now finds himself in: Publicly linked to a leak that may have compromised a covert CIA agent, with Democrats calling for his head.

James Moore and Wayne Slater, the authors of "Bush's Brain," say that Rove learned how to use rumors as a political weapon, while at the same time covering his tracks so they could never be traced to him. The 1994 Texas election was marked by a rumour that Ann Richards, the Democratic incumbent, was a lesbian. During the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, rumours spread that Bush's main opponent, Senator John McCain, had fathered illegitimate children.

Rove's aggressive no-hold barred style was evident in Bush's bitterly fought election contest with John Kerry. The Massachusetts senator struggled under labels affixed to him by the Bush campaign, which derided him as flip-flopper unfit to be commander in chief. When critics saw his handiwork in the controversy over Kerry's Vietnam War record, triggered by attack ads launched by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans, Rove denied it.